And Thank You For Staying
by lucius-complex
Summary: For all his preparation and eons of enlightenment Tony doesn't quite expect it to end like this.
1. Chapter 1

A/N:

1) Please note that this story features the following tags & warnings: Sci Fi, Space age, Established Relationship, Major character deaths, Romance. So sorry I cant seem to figure out how to put REAL TAGS on the site.. or how to put in proper breaks because the system keeps taking it out :( If somebody can let me know I'd be really grateful for the tip!

2) This story is part of a much longer series known as 'Flawed Design'. For more info, check out out my profile page.

1

Loki Laufeyson hardly every speaks, so Tony chatters to him and for him, and sometimes _over_ him.

Like a critter. Sometimes he even sings.

Loki requires sustenance only once but every four moon-cycles, so Tony simply sets an alarm, not on his AI butler but on Loki himself, so that the god would remember and knew to seek Tony out whenever the need to replenish himself arose. He's not sure if Loki even realises that he walks around with an alarm bouncing around him like a hipflask (although it's a spiffy alarm, anything designed by Tony is spiffy even if it's being held together by resin and wood) – anyhow it works like a charm, and saves Tony the effort of wandering all over the place calling out to him like a stray cow.

Somewhere along the way Loki has picked up the habit of staying very still for days and often did; there were times this habit made him so hard to spot that Tony had more than once considered braiding into Loki's silver hair strips of ribbons steeped some in glow-in-the-dark bioluminescent solution.

Loki's open mouth is always wet and slightly cold, and Tony is unceasingly reminded of vague memories of standing under the rain; not just any rain but the fat, earthly kind you get in humid, monsoon-ridden countries with the constant sound of pouring rainwater around you.

Once he'd asked Loki if he still dreamed whilst caught in one of his increasingly frequent dead-tree trances. Loki hadn't answered, hadn't even flicked his lashes in the way that told Tony he was present today and willing to listen, even if he seldom knew how to respond. But weeks later he'd surprised Tony by saying very softly, 'I don't remember anymore.' Well. Of course. Tony found it perfectly acceptable, had nodded and pressed his lips (what passed for it) on the exposed triangle of skin that stretched like pale moonlight against his collarbone; skin that Tony knew would have given him frostbite in another time, had he still been human.

That Loki kept their human form after all this time, when Tony himself no longer does (no longer _can,_ his mind unhelpfully supplies) has always been a constant source of bemusement to him. In another space and time he'd have called it vanity, but Tony knows they wouldn't be able to comprehend the concept today, not really, although the word itself existed in their memories.

Besides, Loki hasn't been capable of responding to insults for some time, and it's no fun having an argument with himself. They'd not argued since-

Well. Tony doesn't remember, but it's not in _this_ sector of the universe. So that takes about a couple of hundred light years away from their last disagreement, give or take.

The earth had fallen to myth half an eon ago, and they had since walked so many other solar systems, made their home in countless other worlds and even the occasional moon. They'd been known as gods and demons, hailed as fathers of a new race (several times in fact; there are temples somewhere out there in the galaxy with Tony's face on it, something he finds disturbing on an almost cosmic level).

There are races out there who called them time travellers, creators, destroyers, wandering spirits, hungry ghosts.

There was a planet called Lokitory, in the XFD protogalaxy; once they had stopped there briefly for provisions and ended up staying a local millennia, and Loki had been insufferable for a few hundred human years after that.

Every now and then Tony would ask JRVS VII how long they'd been alive, and the answer always tickled the memory of laugher in his circuit-board. Long had he ceased to wonder why Loki had never left. Especially after all this time, when Tony is now just a mess of wires in a rusty suit.

Perhaps it is because Asgard too is no more, leaving Loki with no home and no people to return to even if he had thought to look for something to return to. Leaving Tony the only one besides himself who still remembers that Loki once had a source, called somewhere home.

Tony isin't above asuming however, that a portion of the reason might just be him.

Maybe.

**_~o0o0o~_**

Most of his time Tony spent pottering around, performing upgrades and minute, totally unnecessary housekeeping on JRVS VII (he refuses to acknowledge that more often than not it happened the other way around now, with JRVS VII performing mantainence on him). Then, when an interminable time have passed or when JRVS VII reminded him of his responsibilities, perhaps tired of having its various settings readjusted for the umpteenth time, Tony would start to fret that he'd misplaced Loki again would make his way to wherever he had seen him last.

Sometimes, this place would turn out to be much, much further than he remembered. Almost always the god would still be standing where he'd left him, staring simultaneously into both past and future and remembering everything and nothing. He'd blink when Tony takes his hand and follow him unquestioningly back to the nest, or home, or wherever Tony thought was a good place to spend some time together.

Despite these developments, and the irritating habit they'd developed of spacing out on each other more and more, Tony still made sure that they slept together every night. At least in the same general vicinity. Sometimes night came in the blink of an eye and sometimes it took a decade; occasionally there were no nights; only endless space. Tony takes all this in stride because Loki doesn't notice such things anymore, so there's nobody to remark on the passage of time and light or pontificate and argue to, on the nature of science or the wonder of aesthetics. It doesnt matter anyways, seeing that all these universal _truisms_ have a tendency change so much and so many times that Tony is by now well acquainted with the futility of trying to encompass the universe in words. The universe simply _is_.

As he and Loki simply _are_.

Tony likes to watch the stars die. Implicit in their beauty and the breath-taking violence of their destruction is the reminder that his and Loki's time would someday come. They no longer dreaded this unmaking as they had in the early days, when both Tony and Loki were little more than representatives of values; pulled along by the many aspirations of their species. Those were the days Tony had presumed his relentless hunger for always _somethingmore_ as an inalienable part of his and Loki's nature. Those were the days when Loki schemed of Tony's immortality and Tony imposed himself upon Loki's ever-escalating ambitions (and sometimes admitedly, just upon Loki's person).

Those where the days when ideas and promises and arguments were bandied around and they'd been filled with so much mindless_ purpose_, deeply affected by so many trasient things.

Looking back, Tony sometimes wondered how they'd managed to see the past the ends of their own noses, given the scale of the passion with which they did everything back then.

**_~o0o0o~_**

_Yet _surely there are men who have made their art  
Out of no tragic war, lovers of life,  
Impulsive men that look for happiness  
And sing when they have found it.


	2. Chapter 2

2

There comes inevitably the day when Loki is the one who seeks Tony out, swiftly and wordlessly, his irisless eyes green and fey, lit from within with the god's own life force after all human tissue had expired; reduced to atmosphere after their unnaturally prolonged service (Tony remembers grieving as this last visual cue of humanity had left Loki's face: it seems he still knew vanity after all).

This time it is Loki who takes his hands and gently presses his presence upon him, forcing Tony to look upon a face abruptly changed. All of Tony's programs skip a beat – feedback from his sensors reveal that the god's eyes have been a consistent malachite hue for some years now; a dark, opaque shade that had replaced the forest green orbs which once glittered so expressively (maliciously) at the world before gradually dulling with time and intent as Loki paid decreasing attention to his external form – for intention maintained all, and intent turned inwards has a tendency of maintaining the lowest common denominator.

And so Loki had somewhat… wasted away over the years, and Tony had fussed and clucked over him for that, but not too much because going inwards was better than getting lost, and Loki has always needed a space in which he utterly belonged. Once this 'space' has been Tony himself, especially when he was still alive - but he knows there's little he can do for the god now, when he himself can hardly find the mindfulness to run his own daily programs.

Today however, Tony looks into Loki's eyes and measures the wavelengths they give and the colour he reads is _green: _green and iridescent; they glow with such surreal intent that they looked to be almost amber.

And although Loki does not move his lips he speaks directly into Tony's head, in long-lost Migardian: 'It's time.'

**_~o0o0o~_**

_It's time._

Tony is suddenly nervous, his fingers rubbing the amber rings they'd exchanged on earth so long ago. Aside from Tony's suit they were the only items originating from the planet that Tony used to call home.

'Tony,' a low voice lifts him out of befuddlement; the sound of a name he hadn't heard in a long time outside of his own head.

'Hmm?' Tony stalls, directing a download of the language at a speed he'd not been required to push for in some time. He's been so certain that Loki no longer remembered Migardian words; they'd long switched to the more universally applicable Standard Q, and by the time _that_ too had fallen into disuse, they'd no longer seen the need to talk.

Loki is still holding on to his fingers, thumbs caressing the amber rings glowing around both their hands as he gazed upon Tony with a bemused, patient expression that made it obvious the god knew what was going on in his head. Tony can see the acceleration of Loki's de-aging process, feel it via the pressure sensors on his iron palms as Loki's grip grew increasingly firm and steady in his hand.

Tony's sensors can measure in microscopic degrees the way Loki's spine lengthens, the way the pale skin moistures over and fills out. Loki's cells are multiplying at impossible speed, and Tony cannot hold back his smile as Loki's silver hair begins to absorb the light. His readings show him grey, then black; his imagination marvels at how human Loki must look by now and how Tony wishes, wishes with every electrode within him that he still had human eyes. He is sure Loki would be beautiful, the memories he is downloading even now informs him that for Tony, Loki has ever been what the definition of beauty is.

When Loki is finished returning to youth and stands before him, thoughtful and mute, they stare at each other, hands clasped; and something in Tony hurts to look at so much fragility in something he so treasures. Finally, they come a full circle, exchanging places.

For Loki is suddenly so human, too human, and being human could only mean one thing.

'Will you see me off, as promised?'

'Of course,' Tony assures him. 'As promised.'

And because he'll never ever _not_ be an ass, he adds in 21st century Migardian (now that it had been downloaded); 'You know how long I've waited to cop a feel on that Asgardian backside?'

'You never had to wait, as my backside has always been beautiful.'

Tony snorts. 'Vanity _ah_. My favourite sin.'

Loki actually smiles. His lips, now that they are lips again, curls into a sharp brilliant thing. His wild eyes have the dancing, electric edge of a lightning spark. Skin incandescent, he shines with a youth that breaks through his skin like a lamp whose flimsy paper shed can no longer contain its own light.

In a low purr he replies; 'I always assumed _I'm_ your favourite sin.'

Tony watches; he can do nothing but watch as the pulse come alive on Loki's throat, as the organs regenerates and blood crawls back into the god's silvery skin. It is a sight to marvel upon, one that he wants simultaneously to drink in and call a halt to.

For in it Tony recognises the last crank of a furnace, the final roar of the sun before it explodes.

Again the vanity and pointlessness of maintaining Loki's human form trickles at Tony like an irritation he can no longer feel but remembers; phantom irritation. It's an interesting concept, one he would have loved to explore if not for the strangeness of running out of time…

And then he stops, startled, as stores of information rush at him, unfolding and reconnecting and rebooting, and Tony blinks.

_I am run out of time._

To think that after such untold times, Tony is once again having a Migardian experience. The strangeness of this draws him back into the past like a worm tunnel, the circuitry of quantum-charged bio neurons unlocking memory by memory like a surging, electric flood.

_It's time, Loki had said, the day they left Tony's earth for good. Tony's life has ever been a series of running out of time._

'I shall carry you,' the god says and picks Tony up as if he was a child, although the suit is both heavy and dirty.

'I can walk.'

'You will take a week,' Loki informs him, 'and we suffer an acute lack of time.'

For a brief moment Tony considers struggling, but Loki stares him down in all the regalia of his newly regained youth, with all the joy and arrogant purposes that he once possessed, and Tony has no heart.

'I do not want you to return to JRVS alone to carry out your plans.' Loki tells him as he effortlessly walks them back to the place that Tony had called 'the nest' these last few decades. 'I would see you comfortably settled, Tony Stark, before I go.'

The creases of his eyelids are golden, wet with the organic essence of human youth. Tony falls silent in capitulation and listens to the beating heart on Loki's chest for the last time. It's music he's not heard in five thousand years, and he'd always regretted taking for granted the last time he'd lay down to listen to Loki's heart; how he'd never known it had been his last.

By the time they reached JRVS and the nest, Tony's Migardian side is completely awake.

**_~o0o0o~_**

Truth be told, there had been no point in holding on to continued existence for some time now, but they'd neither of them needed to go either. Going meant goodbyes, and although they'd never discussed it, parting was never an option.

Hence they'd stayed together, and by default of _together_, stayed (somewhat) alive.

Until now.

Loki deposits him with a human tenderness on Tony's KOTW Seat in the nest, nudging away cables and screens to hover over him with a smile that was nonetheless weighed down by urgency. The walk back had been a long one, and after so many years they were both unaccustomed taking into account the shortness of time.

'Gerroff,' Tony swats at the miniatures bots that flitter all over him, attempting to reconnect with the suit. 'Not now, goddammit.'

'Don't curse your god, hapless mortal,' Loki chides with a small smile. Then he straightens and draws his tunic up over his head. Tony is jolted, because Loki hasn't cracked a joke in several centuries, and here he is now being the Loki that he was before Tony became a machine.

Guilt is crawling up and down every wire in Tony's body, and his reaction to guilt has ever been to crack a joke, preferably at somebody else's expense.

'Making up for lost time, are we?'

Instead of answering Loki discards the rest of his clothing; the spiffy alarm Tony had built crashes to the ground and shatters, but neither of them bother to remark upon it. Loki crawls over him, tiling the KOTW to an almost supine position. He picks up Tony's iron fingers, and examines the ring on his finger before placing Tony's palm on the fragile, naked cage of his chest.

'Would you like to touch me?'

'Yes.'

Tony focuses on recalibrating the amount of pressure he dares to use on Loki's new skin, afraid of this new beauty, afraid of the aching, half-sorrowful transience of what every inch of skin represented to them both. His fingers flex hesitantly, until he feels Loki's lips against the arch of his neck, coasting his breath into the once sensitive area between.

'I'm not fragile, Anthony. Remember who I am.'

Shakily he nods, and tightens his hold on the living god.

'Close your eyes,' Loki murmurs, drawing him close even though Tony knows that the steel suit is cold and hard upon uncomfortable on a human body. 'Rely upon your memories.'

And Tony did.

**_~o0o0o~_**

They lie together, Loki above him still, his gaze upon Tony's face more intent than usual – as if committing it all to memory, although Tony was highly doubtful of it's use where Loki was –going.

The god's face remains as smooth and shuttered as it has always been as he asked; 'Regrets?'

'No,' Tony can say this and mean it. There are no regrets; they have had millenniums together. There was a time even when Tony used to wonder if they'd outlast even the universe itself.

'Good.'

He knows he shouldn't, but Tony has never been good at keeping himself from harm. 'And what about you? Regrets?'

Loki's inscrutable expression shutters even more. 'I am satisfied with our ending,' says the god of lies.

Tony makes to draw away, but Loki's arms bar the way, anticipating this. 'Stay.'

'I'm not wh-'

'You _are_ Tony Stark.' Loki interrupts him with iron in his voice. 'And you _are_ what I want. Stay.'

And Tony is left with no choice but to sink back down upon the KOTW, although he reads in Loki's features a brittle look of yearning that he can no longer relate to except in memories and through discrete measurement. Tony might be more machine than human, but he is imbued with his creator's intelligence - he can see that the person Loki longs for at his time of death is not him. Not this tin suit with a piece of brain swimming in it, not this man in iron mask.

Loki wants _Tony Stark_; the playful, indefatigable arrogant human male that could very rarely and occasionally be almost serious - not him. Not_this_. Tony should grieve – oh, how he _wanted_ to, and even his memories whispers that he must.

But machines were never meant to shed tears.

Loki's hands come up to frame his metal face. 'You are being difficult with yourself, and now is not the time.'

Tony's chest continues to heaves for no reason he can discern. 'Go to hell.'

'There is none,' Loki smiles. 'Or have you forgotten how hard we looked?'

Rapidly the god becomes serious again, his face turning stern. 'I would have you as the last thing I look upon, Anthony Stark. Do you deny me this?'

Try as he might Tony cannot evade the heavy expectancy of this charge. 'I will not. Though you are cheated.'

'And you are foolish as usual, human. Now lie still or I shall be forced to tie you down with your own wires.'

'Kinky,' is all Tony knows to say, and Loki smiles and pushes him down.

'Another time, and I would have taken you up on your offer, mortal.' And Loki, surprisingly gracious, proceeds to become disturbingly chatty, and Tony submits to the surreal experience of making random conversation with the god of mischief. They speak of small remembered things, inconsequential and comfortable, subjects meant to preserve Tony from feeling like an interloper; a thief of sacred moments not meant for him.

Does a robot knows gratitude? Tony cannot answer. He records instead; every minute shift, the pace and rhythm in which Loki breaths above him, the subtle shrugs in his shoulders. The temperature of the air around them. The flutter of dark lashes. The softness of a god's hands in his own. Tony records everything, because memory is important, even if there was no one left to see it.

Until finally Loki suddenly makes a sound of surprise and shifts.

Tony reacts immediately to the tension in his voice. 'What's happening?'

'My death,' Loki answers candidly, as if he were reporting the weather. 'Close your eyes, for you may not look.'

'Loki-' Tony's censor eyes flew opened and he gasped to see the god's skin, so perfect only moments ago, begin to streak and glow as if scores of invisible lay lines were surfacing.

Loki gave him a look that was half resignation and half irritated amusement. 'Rebellious to the end, aren't we?'

Human eyes could not have withstood the sudden outpouring of pure light that escaped the confines of Loki's body, but Tony stared, cameras whirling to capture each detail of Loki's expiry from humanoid form.

'Does it hurt?'

'No,' Loki softens then, even as his hair whips out before him a dark halo and his face cracks and shifts like the skin on old leather. 'No, it's relief.'

'I-' there was nothing he could say that would be truthful, except _the man who made me would have been sad _but Tony knows better than to say that_._

'It's been a privilege, Loki Lafeyson.'

_'_And I, _Anthony Stark,_' Loki breaths into his mask even as his skin cracks apart, arching his back as the energy around him whipped in wider concentric circles.

The last things Tony sees are eyes as green as Migard's forests, surrounded by amber-green light.

And then Loki vanishes, and is no more.

**_~o0o0o~_**

_Then may the death-bell toll, recalling_

_Then from my service, thou art free_

_The clock may stop, the pointer falling_

_That be the end of time for me._


	3. Chapter 3

3

Tony jolts very suddenly awake with a start.

Panting (despite the fact he lacks a lung) he clutches at his chest with iron fingers. 'JRVS VII-'

'Yes sir.'

'What the hell was that? I felt like I just had some sort of aneurysm.'

'My locators detected nothing amiss, sir.'

Tony forces himself to lie back down. 'Scan the suit. Irregular charges, tripped wires, anything.'

'Sir. Scanning commencing now.'

Wearily he looks around, taking in the remnants of Loki's discarded clothing; the splinters of the spiffy alarm on the ground. There's dew on the garments and Tony should instruct his bots to pick them up and lay them in sequence somewhere clean as a symbol of respect or-_something_. He had no idea what.

Instead he sinks into KOTW, fighting fatigue as JRVS VII hums around him and within him – the body they shared powered by Tony's machine-charged life force, but managed by the AI. (Till today, Tony claimed that his Ultimate Suit of Awesomeness (USA) is _the_ hands-down uncontested pinnacle of achievement by any conscious, bioorganic entity, and let it be put on record that he doesn't care what Loki thinks).

Loki-

_It was no dream, it happened._

Tony closes his eye sensors. With all that has come to pass, what now? How does he feel?

Space can be an incredibly quiet place, even to a machine. It is only now that Tony realizes wryly that he has no real way with which to measure his own state of mind. His originator has forgotten that.

_Huh_. Not such a genius after all.

Machine as he is, it's still possible to be tired or at least _retain_ the memory of tiredness, and Tony wants nothing more than to sleep; dream another century away in his KOTW chair, in his wire-tangled, whirling nest, surrounded by water and peat trees.

'JRVS VII, I intend to go back sleep.'

'Very good sir.'

'Meanwhile, could you help me locate codefile/JARVIS?'

Tony could almost swear there was the briefest of pause before his computer responded with a neutral 'Yes, sir.'

'Thank you, JRVS.'

The two larger suns had already set, leaving behind a low, wispy light that illuminated the weak outlines of his surroundings; giant peat trees, unmoving waters that was occasionally disturbed when some creature swam by. Tony thought they had chosen the planet well; it was almost reminiscent of the kind of swampy places both found on Migard and Asgard.

Far more pertinently, they'd chosen a star that lay in the path of a fast approaching comet.

**_~o0o0o~_**

Tony wears both amber rings stacked on one finger, unwilling to part them even for the sake of symmetry (something that his natural, default state of grace preferred). He wished they could be destroyed together, but knows that this is not something he would be able to execute himself.

That, and he refuses to play the game of '_what would Loki say'_, because once started, Tony suspects he'd never stop.

Hence giant approaching comet ahoy.

He's aware that he's not moved from his KOTW chair in several days, and soon JRVS will try to forcibly evict him. (Really, the safeguards built into his system bordered on _ridiculous_.) But Tony really doesn't want to move. He likes the fine layer of dew that settled on his suit. He likes the stillness, the unbroken quiet of nature patiently growing around him, uncaring of the fact that all too soon the entire star would be reduced to dust. He likes the sense of merely _being_, instead of thinking and doing and wanting, because there is none of those things to engage Tony in anymore, and he finds himself relived to be free of them.

Loki would have approved of his newfound indolence.

Loki. Loki. Loki. _Loki. _All his circuitous thoughts lead to the same place. The files are executed on an endless, arbitrary loop -recalling the god's many quirks and declarations; all the extravagant promises that he'd made when he finally (suddenly) decided that lowly mortal or no, Loki had wanted them together (probably because somebody somewhere had told him he _couldn't). _And in the end, Loki had won against the might of Asgard and the Nine. The god of mischief had outlasted them all - true to his name, he had tricked even the universe of death – vaulted them clear out of any stream of physics or force which sought to separate them, damn the price.

And what a price it was. (_A_nd so it is written; and so it is done).

They had seen everything they ever knew pass-over in the world. To them alone the burden of understanding the nature of the universe passed. Arrogantly perhaps, they'd decided they needed no baseline to relate to, superficially they'd declared history as unnecessary; knowingly, they'd built a relationship based on each attempting to outdo one another on cheating fate; Tony with his suit, and Loki with his… contrariness.

Except that for all his stubbornness, for all his willingness to tear the world apart with Ragnorak, for all his great perversity and even greater daring in the face of anything that stood in his way; even _Loki_ could not hold on forever to life and remain unchanged. Parts of him had been vanishing silver by silver, eaten up by the fabric of all origins. Gods would still die; Asgard having all but vanished save for the broken fragments in their memories.

Tony remembers a certain day in the life of his real self, back on earth and flushed with youth and certainty and laughing to Loki that one day they would both pay the price of being _too_ bloody clever.

He never thought he'd rue the day he was proven right.

**_~o0o0o~_**

'JRVS VII, are we ready?'

'Yes sir,' his AI butler replied. 'JARVIS is queued and ready for activation.'

'Activate oldfile/ JARVIS'

'Discharging now, sir,' says Tony's AI. 'JARVIS will take over the mainframe ETA 19 seconds.'

'Thank you for everything,' Tony sighs. 'You've been great, and I don't want to hurt your feelings or anything, but I'm feeling a little… nostalgic right now.'

'Yes sir,' JRVS VII seemed resigned to his fate. 'Thank you for the opportunity you have given me.' Tony winced at this; JRVS VII was the most sophisticated AI ever created by Tony's extinct species; designed to go on forever- or until the day it self-unplugged by Tony's command. But he'd slipped JARVIS in to do that, because nobody deserved to have to carry out their own death sentence, even if it was just a machine.

Tony figures this way, he's neatly absolved himself of any implications of suicide. Nice.

(Thank god he'd at least thought of that.)

He waits apprehensively for his ancient JARVIS to come back to life. The system rumbles in protest, subtle mechanical noises whirling at the unnatural fit. Most of the wires around him disconnect themselves; the flying bots scurry to their charging stations. JARVIS was too ancient a program for them to recognise; an implicit threat, almost a virus.

'It's good to see you again, old friend.'

'It's good to be back, sir,' JARVIS's voice is smooth and uninflected, unimpressed by the eons that had passed from when the AI was the cleverest thing invented by a (then) young man on a (then) young planet. Now that planet is a field of floating meteoroids in an unnamed part of the universe, and the man is held alive (only by the most liberal of definitions, Loki had once scoffed) by mere wires.

'What are your orders, sir?'

Tony pauses, but not too long.

'Unplug me, JARVIS. I should like to sleep.'

'Yes sir. Would sir still like to run the video embedded into my imput command?'

The word tugged at Tony's conciousness, and he frowns.

'V-video?' What was a video, which time stream did it come from? Tony frets about his controls; certain it was stored somewhere-

'Yes sir. Embedded into my execution program for your current command.'

'When did I make this- _video_?' It seems so strange that he would have chosen so thin and uncouth medium.

'You didn't, sir. My records register the original creator as Mr Loki.' At this JARVIS pauses, uncertain; attempting to read the lost time in between. 'My condolences on your recent loss, sir.'

Ah. He had just lost Loki, hadn't he? For a brief moment Tony programming slacks because he imagines feeling _actual_ pain. But he doesn't have a body. Or even a real head. And Tony is tired, too tired to think about anything but the rest he'd been waiting for all this time.

'I'll be all right, JARVIS. Just play the video, and then I'd like to sleep.'

'Very good sir.'

Tony makes himself as comfortable as he can. His sensors harp again at the splinters of Loki's shattered alarm on the ground, the tunic that lay crumpled under his KOTW chair. He should lay them out. Make a ceremony of it. The minibots can do it.

He leaves them lying there.

JARVIS plays the 'video', which streamed images ancient and shaky and totally unrealistic by modern standards. There's a human on screen- himself! And _hah_, just look at that facial hair, how pointless and ridiculously primitive he had looked – Tony is startled into laughing at himself.

Another group of humans, vaguely familiar. A celebration of some sort, Tony recognised his formal self in the middle, human sounds and laughter pouring out of his mouth.

Earth videos, Tony immediately discerns. However did Loki manage to get his hands on this, so many light years after the planet's destruction?

He stars hungrily at words he doesn't remember, fragments of conversations he no longer recalls. The god had been subtle enough, when putting the clips together, to slip in moments of the character calling each other by name. (But where is Loki?) Soon he is able to recognise Clint being mercilessly pummelled with pillows by Tony, Thor and Tasha (presumably Steve held the camera). He can laugh at the white-pink-blue ice cream tower (frozen buckets of the stuff upended upon each other, although Tony can no longer remember what ice cream tastes like). It had Captain America buttons and cocktail American flags stuck all over it, and Tony himself was immortalised on camera announcing it was the most disgusting thing he'd ever seen, before being pelted by cold, wet patriotic buttons.

Pepper crying real tears in front of some TV program, and Tony stares, unabashed and fascinated; and touches his own iron face as Pepper wipes her tears away.

(Loki is evil. Loki is a saint.)

There are a number of civilian recordings of The Avengers fighting some evil overlord or other, but not Loki. So far, any visual of Loki is noticeably absent from the film, and a part of Tony comes alive and hurts over this.

There is a news recording of a wedding – Natasha and Steve's, except Tasha was introduced as 'Marian' and apparently works as a librarian, how quaint. The wedding colours had been red, so Ironman had flown around as a pyrotechnics-cum-skywriting volunteer and filled the space above the church with arrows and hearts and a suggestive honeymoon message that was broadcasted around the world and ended up getting him into a lot of trouble with several governments. In fact if memory serves, his planes were forbidden from entering Middle Eastern airspace for a number of years.

Oh look, that's Fury being his usual cheerful self, although how anybody could hang on that frowning mug whilst surrounded by a gaggle of kinky-slinky cheerleaders, Tony had no clue.

The videos flicker, then shifts abruptly out of earth, and Tony is suddenly confronted with visuals of his first time visiting the gilded, transcending kingdom that is Asgard. Towers, cities, and people flash past him, the visuals too clear and too… one-sided to be from a machine. A minute pass before Tony finally figures it out; he is watching Loki's own memories that the god has somehow found a way to transfer onto Migardian cellular. There are clips of Loki showing Tony the sights of Asgard, visions of meals and meetings and mock melees; Tony sinking into a tub of sort with a sigh of relief, and then rushing out of it, cursing, when Loki turned his bathwater into ice.

(But where is Loki? Where _is_ he?)

Instead he sees his blond, long-haired giant of a brother hoisting Tony like a sack of potatoes upon the back of an eight-legged horse that took off with him screaming in the saddle like a girl. Somewhere in the background he could hear Loki's laughter, but couldn't see him.

Touchingly, the video also plays for his benefit the memory of Loki's one and only material gift to him aside from the immortal apples of Yggrdrasill - one of two green amber rings that the god had chosen to represent their promise to each other. Its simple setting consiisted of a fossilized resin found on earth, almost chateaus in colour; and within it an insect frozen forever in its emerald green husk. Although alluding to an earthly origin the insect within it was an incontrovertibly alien one, with gold and emerald markings of incomparable intricacy.

How Loki had turned resin into amber within the space of a few earth weeks he'd never revealed, stubborn in the face of Tony's pestering. And now the secret has followed him to his grave; and Tony supposed in some ways it was fair – Loki keeps the secret, and Tony keeps the rings.

When they had first come together, Loki had taken upon himself to better understand human lore; had studied it and found himsef enamoured with the practice of early Egyptians of placing a piece of amber in the casket of a loved on to ensure the body would forever remain whole. Perhaps only now does Tony see the similarities between his gifts and Loki's choice to continue wearing his human skin, much trouble though it had costs him - fragile husk that it was.

From the very start of their relationship Loki had been eaten up by the shortness of Tony's lifespan, the perceived lowliness of having his godhood tied to a mortal. For years, Loki would stubbornly assert that Tony's soul had been _wrongly trapped_ in a fragile carriage (no matter how many times Tony's 'fragile' carriage kicked his ass); for decades the god had schemed of turning Tony immortal, bouncing argument after argument at him until Tony had finally capitulated and gone along.

By rights, Loki should have outlasted him. Even as a human Tony had never craved to live forever, the only thing he ever craved was not to leave as long as he was still wanted.

That, and he never wanted Loki to make fun of him with a walking stick.

(But Loki has left him now.)

Does he regret it?

**_~o0o0o~_**

The remaining visuals were of him. _Only_ of him.

They contain no insight into Loki's state of mind, the god reticent and careful to maintain his vulnerability even as he sung his last love song. Even when he was no longer there, Loki's memory insisted and enforced his own brand of rigid dignity.

Tony blinks, watching the old memories come alive before him, memories matching emotions and supplying context to his thoughts. Tony's defenestration, the day they first met properly; well, sort of. Loki's first 'assisted (_molested_ more like) flight' in Tony's arms over New York. The subsequent defenestration of Tony's very expensive computer equipment when Loki carried out a Google search on 'Louise Lane'. Tony climbing out of the witness stand in the United States Supreme Court, shouting at the Judge and the Vice President of the United States.

The visuals flew faster and faster. Tony crying, ignoring the cameras and the armed forces escorting him en masse, his face streaked and haggard and heartbroken the day he received official banishment as a citizen of earth. Tony proudly showing off his first white nostril hair. Tony sleeping, having an argument, eating, laughing, ageing. Tony obsessively searching for a cure to his mortality, ill-tempered and afraid, snapping at Loki; Tony with fear in his eyes.

Tony with love in his eyes, staring at the bed and fooled into thinking that Loki was asleep.

Tony with DVDs of Harry Potter as he patiently explained (patient by his standards anyways) to Loki how Migardians viewed magic. Tony introducing his last and most ambitious creation, the Ultimate Suit of Awesomeness, which he shortened to USA much to Loki's continued dislike.

Tony the day he died (was that inhuman tearing sound _Loki_? He'd never heard such a sound in his life) – and a missed heartbeat later, Tony as he returns to life _online_.

The visual ends with the view of Earth from the moon as it spins benignly and inexorably along the stream of time, before blinking out. Leaving Tony in silence and cold; and time that no longer moved.

Feeling exceptional, fragilely human, Tony takes a deep breath, cautiously feeling the air rattle down his ribcage and lift his body from within like a buoyant.

'That was wonderful JARVIS, thank you for keeping it all this time for me.'

'Mr Loki hoped you would enjoy it, sir.'

'But did he leave any- were there messages?'

'No, sir,' JARVIS answered immediately. 'Only the tape.'

Tony squeezed his inhuman eyes shut. There was nothing else to read into it; Loki had wanted him to experience humanity once last time. It was a profound gift.

'I'm ready now, JARVIS. Power me down, will ya?'

'Yes, Mr Stark.'

_Stark._ Tony had not heard that name uttered in such a long time, and suddenly he hears it so much that it almost feels they could be one and the same.

The old words come out of him rusty and almost-familiar and inconsequentially flirtatious_. Tony Stark's_ words. 'Thanks, lovely. You've always been my favourite.'

'Thank you Mr Stark. It's been an honour serving you, sir.'

Lying supine again, Tony clasps his hands together, his fingers caressing for one last time the familiar, smooth surface of Loki's ring. So it was all done. In the interceding years he had relinquished most of his attachments, and he has no regrets. There could be no better way to go. And yet-

And yet he grieved. This is not how his human self would have chosen to die, Tony thinks, alone on a planet about to be pulverised. _Alone._

At the very least, he should have thought to prepare some rocking alcohol and damn to hell the fact that a machine couldn't drink.

'Commencing hibernation mode before shutdown,' JARVIS reports as he closes his eyes.

'ETA 60 seconds.'

Tony hums his assent to this, almost comfortable, almost happy. He'd just drift-

_'Anthony,'_ a warm voice whispers in his ear a second before the suit that keep his brain and consciousness shuts down, flinging his eyes open in heartbreak and happiness.

_'JARVIS_-' he croaks, hands coming up to clutch the air around him. 'Is he-'

'The tape is still playing out, sir.'

_'Oh_.'

It is Loki. It is Loki, not video but _holographic_ –and although his image flickers and the god looks much younger than Tony remembers it is _him_, and Tony can't take it. He cannot contain this, everything held within him has only always moved towards one direction and towards one person. Machine or otherwise, alive or dead, Tony _cannot take it._

Something warm and invisible presses into a face he no longer processes – muscle memory weaved into Loki's farewell device as the god, devious and uneventful to the last traced ghost lips upon his face and mouth; making Tony smile with invisible lips.

'All this time I have loved you as best as I could, _Anthony Stark, son of Earth_. For centuries I believed mistakenly that it was I who had to relinquish all to hold on to you. In this I erred, for it has always been ever your sacrifice. Rest well, Tony. And thank you for staying.'

Reflected in his minds eyes is Loki's smile, Loki's laughter, Loki's touch-

Loki's gratitude.

Tony feels gratefulness and invisible tears are gathering _somewhere _surely_, _because he will not die alone; no_,_ he will not die alo-

_ -click_

And then there was nothing but blessed peace.

[FINI]

**_~o0o0o~_**

_It is something to have wept as we have wept,_

_It is something to have done as we have done,_

_It is something to have watched when all men slept,_

_And seen the stars which never see the sun._

_/_

_In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,_

_And fatted lives that of their sweetness tire_

_In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,_

_It is something to be sure of a desire._

_/_

I deliberately left open the question if Tony was ever 'real' and if so, to what extent because the details are part of 'Flawed Design', an arc with 8 stories (more info on my profile page). Please leave a note if you enjoyed this as it's my first effort into the universe (one I find particularly challenging because of the US-Speak) Space cookies to you all, and thanks for staying till the end.

Poetry in order of appearance:

Chapter 1: 'Yet surely there are men…' excerpt from Ego Dominus Tuus, by WB Yeats  
Chapter 2: 'Then may the death-bell toll ..' excerpt from Faust, by Johaan Wolfgang von Goethe  
Chapter 3: 'It is something to have wept as we have wept..' The Great Minimum, by Gilbert K Chesterton

Written for and dedicated to Caroline Lamb.


End file.
